Cinema fans are set to flock to see Where The Crawdads Sing upon its release this week.
The Reese Witherspoon -produced film features Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones - who has been praised for her southern American accent - as the heroine Catherine “Kya” Clark.
The two-hour movie is based on Delia Owens' international bestseller, first published in 2018.
The book became a word-of-mouth sensation and grew to become one of the top reads during lockdown.
It has sold 12 million copies to date and has spent more than three years on the New York Times bestseller chart.
Where is Where The Crawdads Sing set?
Where The Crawdads Sing is about a young woman who lives alone in the marshes of North Carolina in the US.
Kya becomes enveloped in a local murder mystery as part of the plot.
The storyline makes use of the marshland and swamps of the county.
Is Where The Crawdads Sing a true story?
The novel is an entirely fictional story and created by the retired wildlife biologist Delia Owens, who was almost 70 when the book hit the shelves.
The narrative starts in 1952 with recluse Kya learning to fend for herself from the age of six in a ramshackle house on marshland where her father routinely beats her mother until the bruised matriarch leaves, followed by Kya’s older siblings.
By the age of 10 she has to make her way alone in the world, fending for herself by watching how the wildlife around her copes with the perils of the harsh terrain.
Cruelly ostracised by residents of the nearby coastal town of Barkley Cove, Kya sells sacks of hand-harvested mussels - her main sustenance - to shopkeeper Jumpin and his wife Mabel to put food in her belly.
During the storyline, which spans across almost 20 years, Kya also channels an enduring fascination with wildlife into writing and illustrating a book.
A touching romance with the kindly Tate Walker ends when he heads to college, followed by rich, handsome quarter-back Chase Andrews courting her despite opposition from his mother.
When Chase is found dead at the base of a rusty fire tower, the finger of suspicion points at Kya and a local lawyer agrees to mount a robust defence in what becomes a thrilling courtroom drama.
What has Daisy Edgar-Jones said about the book?
Speaking at the Dublin premiere of Where The Crawdads Sing, Daisy Edgar-Jones revealed that she was one of the many people to pick up the book during the Covid crisis.
Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, is another who heralded it as part of her lockdown reading list, calling it a “heartbreaking coming-of-age novel” that had her in tears.
Edgar-Jones, 24, told reporters: “I read it as I was auditioning, I loved the book.
“I really fell in love with that world. I’d never been to a marsh before, and I found the writing so vivid and I really became so immersed in it.
“I was reading it during Covid, the story is predominantly about a young girl who’s isolated, and I think that was something that I was like, I feel I can relate to certain aspects of this.
“This kind of lonely feeling is something we all have maybe felt during that time.
“We filmed in New Orleans in the marsh surrounding Louisiana, it’s a great backdrop for the murder mystery of the story because it’s quite a hostile environment. It’s not an easy place to live, it’s certainly not an easy place to film.
“We had crazy, crazy weather and big thunder and lightning storms that would shake your bed.”
